The Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics is pleased to congratulate Silvia Beatriz V. Ramos, MD, PhD, on her promotion from Associate Professor to Professor, effective June 1, 2026.
Dr. Ramos is a physician-scientist whose work bridges RNA biology, reproductive biology, immunology, and hematopoiesis. She earned her MD from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas and her MS and PhD in Basic and Clinical Immunology from the Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil. She subsequently completed postdoctoral training in the Laboratory of Signal Transduction (LST) at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS-NIH).
Dr. Ramos joined UNC in 2006 as a Clinical Assistant Professor and clinical IVF embryologist in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She also became a certified Clinical Embryologist and Embryology Laboratory Director and helped introduce oocyte cryopreservation into UNC’s clinical IVF program. In addition to her clinical responsibilities, she established and led her own basic research laboratory, where her studies of RNA-binding proteins and female fertility produced foundational findings that supported her successful NIH/NICHD K08 Career Development Award in 2013. In 2014, she joined the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020.
Research in the Ramos Lab focuses on the RNA-binding protein ZFP36L2 and the molecular mechanisms governing its target selection in different tissues. Her foundational studies established the essential role of ZFP36L2 in female fertility and early embryonic development and identified luteinizing hormone receptor mRNA as its first physiological target. Her laboratory has since investigated how RNA sequence and structure influence ZFP36L2 binding and has expanded this work into immune regulation, hematopoiesis, cell-cycle control, and human disease. Current projects integrate genetically engineered mouse models, CRISPR/Cas9-edited human induced pluripotent stem cells, transcriptomics, eCLIP, structural modeling, and single-cell sequencing.
Dr. Ramos is also a co-director of the RNA-binding proteins theme within the UNC RNA Discovery Center. She has mentored more than 25 trainees at multiple career stages and founded a four-year Scholarly Concentration Program in the UNC School of Medicine.
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Ramos on this well-deserved promotion.
Learn about her research at the Ramos lab website